JOBLESS young people are pulling out the stops to improve their community on a course run by firefighters.

Over the last two weeks a team of ten on the Prince’s Trust Team programme, run by Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service at Farringdon Community Fire Station, Sunderland, have helped renovate the garden and paint walls of Shiney Row Child Care Cooperative in Shiney Row.

The 12 week programme gives unemployed young people aged 16 to 25 a chance to learn new skills to help them into work.

The students at Farringdon chose the renovating of the centre as one of them has a son that uses the facility and another has a nephew that uses it.

They got funding from Barclays Bank to buy materials for the project .

Team leader Alan D'Arcy, of Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service, said: "I am incredibly proud of what the students have achieved. “They have really put their heart and soul into improving the centre, which meant so much to the students, developing important life and employability skills along the way."